Report on the 7th International Conference on High Nitrogen Steels (HNS 2004)

The 7th International Conference on High Nitrogen Steels (HNS 2004) was held on September 19 to 22, 2004 in Oostende, Belgium. Oostende is a beautiful sandy resort facing the North Sea and is located approximately 100 km northwest of Brussels. The conference was held in a hotel which was reconstructed from an old royal palace and was quite impressive. This conference has been held primarily in Europe since it began in 1988, but meetings have also been held in India and in Kyoto, Japan. There were approximately 100 participants from 21 countries at this meeting. It was a fairly small scale conference but was organized very well and was very rewarding. The eight participants from Japan included Dr. Shuji Hamano (Daido Steel Co., Ltd.), Prof. Yasushi Kikuchi (Osaka University), Dr. Yasuyuki Miyano (AIST), Dr. Harumatsu Miura and Mr. Hidenori Ogawa (College of Industrial Technology), Prof. Setsuo Takaki and Prof. Toshihiro Tsuchiyama (Kyushu University), and Dr. Yasuyuki Katada (NIMS).

On a sad note, Mr. G. Stein and Prof. Alan Hendry, who were still in the midst of their prime and acted as central figures of the management committee for this series of conferences for many years, passed away successively during this past year. The news was shocking to everyone, and colleagues offered prayers and expressed condolences for them at the beginning of this conference.

This conference was divided into the following 7 sessions and included 74 oral presentations and 10 poster presentations. Session

1. Atomic-Scale Phenomena Session

2. Thermodynamics, Kinetics and Phase Transformations Session

3. Meso-Scale Phenomena and Microstructures Session

4. Alloy Development and Processing Session

5. Applications and Performance Session

6. Corrosion Session

7. Welding

This conference was able to collect distinguished researchers from various countries with the purpose of trying to discover an effective use of nitrogen in steel. It has gained a high reputation as a place for reporting the research results covering a wide range of subjects from basic research to applied research and also as a place for conducting high quality discussions. The features of this year’s conference included: an increase in the amount of research to achieve the optimization of strength, corrosion resistance, fracture toughness, and so on, through the method of adding a pair of nitrogen and carbon elements instead of adding a single atom of nitrogen which used to be the mainstream, moving into a generation that maintains microstructural control by thermo-mechanical treatment from a generation which only utilized the addition of N, the numerous presentations on the simulation on the behavior of nitrogen atom by ab initio calculations, and the progress made by young female researchers.

The social events, in addition to the ones at the conference, were also organized well, and the women who accompanied their spouses enjoyed the boats in Bourget and their trips to the historical sites. Immediately after the end of the conference, a petanque tournament was held on the beach. Petanque is not very popular in Japan, but can be described in a few words as curling on sand. Although there were not very many participants for this event because of the cold winds on the beach, Professor Takaki, the most energetic one among us and the only participant from Japan, really enjoyed his first experience with petanque.

The next international conference on high nitrogen steels (HNS 2006) is scheduled for September 2006 in Jiuzhaigou Valley, Sichuan Province, China. Many members from the inquiry commission who will be working for the next conference were in attendance at this conference.

(Yasuyuki Katada, Corrosion Resistant Design Group)
　

From the left, Dr. Miura, Dr. Katada, Mrs. N. Akdut, Dr. N. Akdut, Prof. Takaki, Dr. J-H. Schmitt, Mrs. J-H. Schmitt

[Back to Top page]